<p class="VARAbstract">The VESPACE project aims to revive an evening of theatre at the <em>Foire Saint-Germain</em> in Paris in the 18^th century, by recreating spaces, atmospheres and theatrical entertainment in virtual reality. The venues of this fair have disappeared without leaving any archaeological traces, so their digital reconstruction requires the use of many different sources, including the expertise of historians, historians of theatre and literature. In this article, we present how we have used video game creation tools to enable the use of virtual reality in three key stages of research in the human sciences and particularly in history or archaeology: preliminary research, scientific dissemination and mediation with the general public. In particular, we detail the methodology used to design a three-dimensional (3D) model that is suitable for both research and virtual reality visualization, meets the standards of scientific work regarding precision and accuracy, and the requirements of a real-time display. This model becomes an environment in which experts can be immersed within their fields of research and expertise, and thus extract knowledge reinforcing the model created –through comments, serendipity and new perspectives– while enabling a multidisciplinary workflow. We also present our tool for annotating and consulting sources, relationships and hypotheses in immersion, called PROUVÉ. This tool is designed to make the virtual reality experience go beyond a simple image and to convey scientific information and theories in the same way an article or a monograph does. Finally, this article offers preliminary feedback on the use of our solutions with three target audiences: the researchers from our team, the broader theatre expert community and the general public.</p><p class="VARAbstract">Highlights:</p><p>• Immersive Virtual Reality is used to enhance the digital reconstruction of an 18th-century theatre, by allowing experts to dive into their research topic.</p><p>• Virtual Reality (VR) can also be used to disseminate the digital model through the scientific community and beyond while giving access to all kinds of sources that were used to build it.</p><p>• A quick survey shows that VR is a powerful tool to share theories and interpretations related to archaeological or historical tri-dimensional data.</p>

This article introduces the VESPACE project, an international, multi-disciplinary digital humanities initiative to build a computer-mediated playable simulation—a video game—of the eighteenth-century Paris Fair theatre. As part of this project, a weeklong postgraduate workshop was convened by the authors in May 2020 to develop protocols and procedures for coding literary and historical data for the Ensemble social physics engine that will govern behaviour of NPCs in the interactive model. This article lays out the history and theory of social physics, the potential impacts of this project on historiographic practice, and the methodology and outcomes of the workshop week. We conclude with a discussion of lessons learned and promising leads with respect to the future of applying social physics to humanities research. [This article is part of the collection Computer Modelling and Simulation for Literary-Historical Research: VESPACE and Social Physics.]Cet article présente le projet VESPACE, une initiative pluridisciplinaire internationale dans le domaine des humanités numériques qui vise à construire une simulation ludique – un jeu vidéo – basée sur le Théâtre de Foire parisien au XVIIIe siècle. En mai 2020, les auteurs de cet article organisèrent un atelier postdoctoral d’une semainedans le but de développer des protocoles et des procédures de codage de données littéraires et historiques pour le moteur de physique sociale Ensemble, qui règle le comportement des personnages non joueurs (PNJ) dans le modèle interactif. Cet article présente l’histoire et la théorie de la physique sociale, les impacts potentiels de ce projet sur la pratique historiographique, ainsi que la méthodologie et les résultats de la semaine d’atelier. Nous concluons par une discussion des leçons apprises et des perspectives prometteuses pour l’avenir de l’application de la physique sociale dans la recherche en sciences humaines. [Cet article fait partie de la collection Modélisation et simulation informatiques pour la recherche littéraire-historique : VESPACE et physique sociale.]

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This article proposes a comparative reading of the role of theatre in the cinema of Jacques Rivette, as seen through the lens of Denis Diderot’s work, looking specifically at the 1984 film L’Amour par terre and the 1757 ‘novel’ Le Fils naturel. The eighteenth-century philosopher interrogates the specificity of theatre — its theatricality — in the context of a hybrid work that seeks to overcome the lack of live spectacle in the printed text by imbricating the dramatic play within a narrative about the ‘real’ lives of characters, in order to illustrate his ideas on the renewal of theatrical art. In turn, Rivette’s cinematic practice poses parallel questions, probing the border between film, condemned to repeat itself, and the theatre (Rivette’s subject of predilection), whose infinite potential for variation comprises its generic signature. In the work of both artists, acting exercises an important influence on the temporality of the narrative, the status of truth, the relationship to images, and the moral value of art. In this way, Rivette and Diderot illustrate the challenges presented by a theatricality at once rejected and embraced by modernity, revealing performance as a crucial tool for exploring the limits of representation.